Johnny Hardwick died today. For those of you who don’t know, he voiced Dale Gribble on King Of The Hill. They were making another series of the show at the time of his death. I’m not sure what they should do about it. I guess a replacement would be best. He’s not impossible to do a decent impression of. Having the character off the show would basically ruin it completely, in my opinion. Some characters I can see you writing around, but that core cast is a bit different. I guess we’ll see what happens.

I promised the Discord server I’d tell a story from my past that relates to Dale Gribble, as the news reminded me of it. Back when I was working for the store that inspired most of Between Failures I was demoted from floor manager and they brought in a new guy named Waylon. My demotion is a whole other story. Waylon was the spitting image of Dale Gribble. Not just a little bit. He looked exactly what you think he would look like as a human and he also sounded incredibly similar. He was more effeminate, with a bit more of a southern accent, but not by much. He also chain smoked. He never wore a hat but other than that he was this insane simulacrum of this fictional character. He also had no knowledge of King Of The Hill, so he was totally unaware of any of this. After working with him for a while I finally told him about his likeness to dale and he scoffed. Then, one day he comes in and just looks at me at the music counter for a long moment.
“The only thing that keeps me alive is my will to smoke again.” He says, then walks away.
It was fucking hilarious. He started watching episodes of KOTH in his off time once in a while and slowly began incorporating lines from the show into his daily patter. It was fantastic. He didn’t work for the store for all that long. His mother was ailing and he wanted to transfer back to Texas. I ended up taking the floor manager position again, against my will, so he could leave. That was one of the key moments that eventually led me to Gamestop and then to starting the comic. I have no idea what became of him. He smoked so much he might well be dead. He wasn’t in great health to begin with, in spite of being rail thin. Anyway, that’s my real life Dale Gribble story.

I guess I should make a note that if you are a patron you might want to check your pledge to see if everything processed properly. I forgot to mention that they fucked up their payment thing yet again when it actually happened. There’s a whole process you might need to go through. If you’re sick of the constant screw up maybe you’d like Subscribestar better. As far as I can tell they haven’t had any similar issues, but I may just be ill informed. So few people use it I don’t pay as much attention.

Anyway, that’s about it for me tonight. The Teen is coming to visit over the weekend, so I guess I’ll be doing more random stuff than usual. You guys have a nice time until we meet again.

13 Comments

What they should do is replace dale, and have him less “conspiracy theory nut” a few episodes in have someone point it out that dale is acting different. Where “dale” panics that he’s been found out. The government ACTUALLY DID replace dale with a clone or something, because the real dale died in an accident.

At least that’s how i’d handle it if i was running KotH

That would break the rules of the world though.

Or they could use AI to synthesize his voice, after gatting any copyright clearances from his estate.

They could have him talk through one of those buzzy voice modulators for a while, until he gets a, mmm, throat transplant (and a somewhat different voice). Because of his smoking, you see.

That is an amazing story lol and funny how in a round about way that helped contribute to this comic happening

Ed’s blush is telling. Speaking of telling, I can’t remember who knows about Ed and Nina.

My youngest son when he was between 11 and 14 was a reasonable analog for Bobby Hill. He grew out of that phase and is now tall and lanky. Cheers ~ulrich

Enjoy the teen’s visit. You both have memories and new experiences to share.

And I can’t help wondering how surreal it will be to refer to The Teen by that name in a few years when she hits her 30’s.

Or when she has a couple of kids, which realistically might be before that. Maybe we should call her the ex-teen?

Nah. Surreality is much more interesting than actual reality.

IMHO

She might even look back on her time with Jackie as good memories and appreciate being referred to as the Teen because of that even into her eighties.

This might be a shaky comparison, but-
I could see why Reggie’s new happiness + friendliness might be very confusing to his co-workers, because he’s had a past were he wasn’t [happy + friendly].

Such as- a [lot] of US Military had a hard time trusting the West German Army, in the year 1960.

A lot of US Military people must of been saying to each other: “I [know] they are our allies now, but you know- 15 years ago, how many of them were…uh….”

2554 Ol’ Reliable-ish.

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